Avid’s customer community steers the course

WORLD: Avid has unveiled the findings from the inaugural Avid Customer Association (ACA) Vote. More than 6,500 members of the ACA from approximately 4,000 organisations spanning 109 countries took part in the voting process to inform Avid’s future plans in regards to technology trends such as cloud computing/virtualisation, IP networking and content delivery, 4K/UHD in mainstream broadcast, multiplatform content delivery, and virtual/augmented reality.

The ACA is four years old with more than 17,000 members globally and run by a dedicated group of renowned media leaders. Their vote revealed that 71.1% of media professionals are considering transitioning part of their infrastructure or workflow to the cloud within the next two years and that 4.8% are thinking of moving their entire infrastructure and workflow to it. While demonstrating the desire of many for hybrid cloud deployment models, the vote also highlighted that hybrid approaches are preferred for the transition to IP, as 50.9% are considering hybrid SDI/IP connectivity for new investments and 26.6% are looking into IP-only connectivity. When asked about the reasons for considering a move to IP video/audio, dynamic scalability was the most popular response at 36.6%, with new high-bandwidth productions such as UHD (28.8%) and format-agnostic workflows (16.3%) also proving popular.

The popularity of high-resolution formats was also proven, with 64.4% claiming that they expect their organisation to adopt 4K/UHD within the next two years. As for delivery of 4K-UHD content, 50.7% view OTT/internet delivery as the most prevalent, with terrestrial broadcast only accounting for 9.9%, lagging behind theatrical/venue viewing (21.6%) and satellite or cable delivery (13.6%). Storage capacity is viewed as the largest obstacle to adopting 4K (31.6%), followed closely by the cost of upgrading (30.5%).

Most revealed that they create content for multiple platforms (73.3%), while only 32.3% said that they use a single online video platform for social media content distribution. The driving factors behind investing in multiplatform content production were the ability to reach new audiences and maximising audience engagement at a very tight 37.8% and 37.7% respectively. The majority of professionals (67.7%) stated that they used social media online video platforms.

Interpreting the results for augmented and virtual reality, one might consider the mediums to still be a work in progress. This is because in spite of 58.4% claiming that VR/AR is important to their strategic growth plan, 82.3% answered that they were unsure of which model to follow and 63% stated that they have no current plans to implement VR/AR in the next three years. The most appealing applications of VR/AR are considered to be entertainment (23.1%), live events (21.2%), gaming (20%) and film (19.4%). The ideal length for VR/AR programming is 15 to 30 minutes (29.4%).

‘The ACA Vote represents a new phase of customer participation in Avid’s future direction, building on the deep community partnership with our customers and users,’ said Avid president Jeff Rosica. ‘The results of the ACA Vote will directly influence innovations for the MediaCentral Platform, and ensure that the ongoing development of our comprehensive tools and workflow solutions for media creation, distribution and optimisation continue to support what is most important to our customers and their creative, technical and business requirements.’